Florida Competing In Race To Fund High-speed Railroad

Florida is in a race with other states to fund a high-speed railroad from Tampa to Orlando and Miami, officials told a business meeting Tuesday.

Two other such proposals, linking Philadelphia and Pittsburg and Montreal and New York City, are said to be nearer to finding the necessary funds.

``In my judgment,`` said Carl Huff, acting staff director of the state`s high-speed rail commission, ``there is only going to be one`` such high-speed train. ``I don`t think the financial community is going to invest in three,`` he said.

Florida officials said Tuesday they were also concerned about the progress of proposals to connect Los Angeles and San Diego and Dallas and Houston. But the California plan is actually defunct and the Texas system only tentative.

In Florida alone, the train is said to have a $4 billion price tag.

``If we don`t drop the ball, we will be the first,`` said David Rush, a Hollywood businessman and a member of the state`s high-speed rail commission.

His committee, with the backing of the governor, expects to see a high-speed train in operation here by 1995. The project would be financed privately; the state would dedicate the right of way for at least the first three years.

Companies from Japan, Germany, Britain, Canada and France have prepared proposals and all appear convinced they can turn a profit.

Trains would hurtle from Miami to Orlando along the interstate highway corridor at 150 miles per hour and connect to Tampa at fares up to $49 one way.

``The Florida project is unique among all of them,`` said Helen Edge, a spokeswoman for the Railway Progress Institute in Alexandria, Va. ``It probably has more positive political backing than any other.``

But nationwide, only one high-speed rail task force has even selected the technology it plans to use and chosen station stops.

``What we have is feasible,`` said Pennsylvania High-Speed Rail Commission Director Robert Casey.

Rush, speaking at a breakfast meeting of the Broward Economic Development Board Committee of 100, compared the economic benefits to the enormous growth of the American frontier in the age of the first transcontinental railroad.

He said, ``We don`t have to worry about the Indians, but we do have a lot of other problems. They`re called environmentalists and vested interests.``

In fact, environmentalists have not expressed much organized opposition to the plan. But its fate could nonetheless be grim, according to at least one study.

The federal Office of Technology Assessment has said the train would not attract enough riders to survive without a subsidy. And one company that was interested in building Florida`s bullet train, the now-defunct American High- Speed Rail Corp., estimated that it could incur a $1 billion-a-year deficit.

American High-Speed Rail was to build the Los Angeles-San Diego train.

A consultant hired by the state, Barton-Aschman Associates, Inc., said the project could be built by 1995 and would be feasible. So did Amtrak, the national railroad, in a study underwritten by a Japanese foundation in 1983.